“July 3rd Celebration (and the Smoke Ghost)” by Richard F. Yates
Hey folks! My family had a good time yesterday evening. Because I work the closing shift tonight, on the ACTUAL Independence Day, my wife and daughters and their significant others agreed to come over last night and have some food and blow off some fireworks, so that I’d get to see some flashy stuff… It was very nice of them!
Interestingly, I don’t have THAT many photos of actual FIREWORKS going off because I was taking VIDEO (cheap-ass video with my phone) instead of still photos. (I did, however, upload several of the videos to the FACEBOOT, so that our family members who weren’t HERE could see our silly antics.) But I did get some snaps, and from these several dozen images, I’ve picked the best, weirdest, silliest, most oddly lit pictures to share with you folks. (Hopefully, these images will inspire other folks to get out and DO STUFF with their families and friends. We all had a GREAT time, even though we didn’t spend much money, just enjoying each other’s company and trying to be funny---there was more than one “That’s what she said” joke fired off during this gathering… Enjoy these moments while you still have the ability!)
Here’s some photos of the fam…
And here are a couple of weird images of the sidewalk after a few fireworks went off. Ellie (the younger daughter) noticed these markings and thought I should get some snaps. I agreed…
Now, here’s the BIG BAM BOOM (even though we don’t really like “BOOM” fireworks and much prefer the “Oooo… Ahhhh…,” pretty sparkles stuff…)
Now here’s where stuff gets weird… (It HAD to get weird, right?) While looking through the images and trying to decide which ones to share, I noticed this strange “smoke ghost” lurking off to the side of the festivities!!!
Did you see it? Creepy, right???
But, because this is a SKEPTICAL broadcast, I feel it’s important that I reveal something that might not be apparent, if we didn’t look closely at the earlier photos in this series. Mariah (my wife) was walking around, picking up spent fireworks carcasses and putting them into a metal bucket. Two shots BEFORE the smoke ghost “appears” next to Elise, Mariah can be seen walking towards the scene, continuing her perpetual cleaning mission. If I hadn’t spotted this, I might have been genuinely disturbed by the apparent human figure in the smoke, but knowing that this “ghost figure” is just Mariah in the midst of a weird lighting situation is actually pretty cool. It shows how EASY it could be for someone to mistake a simple, but oddly lit, photograph (the light from the porch behind Mariah puts her features in shadow, and she appears much darker than the white house behind her in the photo---and then the smoke from Ellie’s sparkler obscures her in a creepy and mysterious way.) The end result is an image that APPEARS like it might be something supernatural.
It’s not.
It’s just a cool looking coincidence---but HOPEFULLY, it helps to demonstrate how easy it is for a “ghost photo” to be created, if we don't look at ALL of the available evidence! In this case, the images taken just BEFORE this creepy one reveal exactly how the "ghost" appeared!
(To quote Brian Dunning from the Skeptoid podcast: "Always be skeptical.")
Okay, that’s my 3rd of July, Super Fun Smoke Ghost Post! Hope everyone who cares to celebrate has a safe holiday!!!
Later, skaters!
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)
SUPPORT INDEPENDENT FOLKS WHO ARE JUST MAKING STUFF BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT!!!
https://steemit.com/@richardfyates
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com/read-a-damn-book-list/
https://makersplace.com/store/richardyates/